Stras­burg will miss sec­ond straight start

When the Wash­ing­ton Na­tion­als placed Stephen Stras­burg on the dis­abled list with a right el­bow nerve im­pinge­ment July 27, Man­ager Dusty Baker in­sisted the right-han­der would miss just one start.

“We just backed up Stras just for pre­cau­tion. He’ll miss one turn,” Baker said at the time. “Good thing, this is where the 10day DL comes into ef­fect, to help him.”

Stras­burg, how­ever, will miss at least a sec­ond start — and per­haps more. On Fri­day, Stras­burg said he had made sig­nif­i­cant progress in re­cent days and was sched­uled to throw a bullpen ses­sion at Wrigley Field be­fore the Na­tion­als faced the Chicago Cubs. But on Satur­day, the Na­tion­als stopped short of say­ing Stras­burg had thrown a bullpen ses­sion.

Baker said Gen­eral Man­ager Mike Rizzo told him that Stras­burg had thrown a bullpen “I think two days ago, or some­thing like that,” be­fore he asked a spokesper­son when ex­actly that was. The spokesper­son said Stras­burg is “still just in his throw­ing pro­gram.” The club’s of­fi­cial up­date later was that “he’s con­tin­u­ing to progress in his throw­ing pro­gram.”

Even if he did throw a bullpen Fri­day, Stras­burg will miss at least a sec­ond start be­cause he hasn’t thrown the sim­u­lated game Baker main­tained he would have to do be­fore re­turn­ing. Asked whether Stras­burg would have to go on a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion as­sign­ment be­fore re­turn­ing, Baker said he didn’t know.

“We haven’t ad­dressed that ei­ther,” Baker said. “You guys are kind of ahead of our in­for­ma­tion base. I heard he was get­ting bet­ter.”

For now, the Na­tion­als will con­tinue fill­ing Stras­burg’s spot in the start­ing ro­ta­tion with Erick Fedde. The club of­fi­cially re­called the right-han­der from Class AAA Syra­cuse and placed Gio Gon­za­lez on the pa­ter­nity leave list Satur­day morn­ing. Baker had said the move was com­ing Fri­day, when he an­nounced that Fedde would make his sec­ond ca­reer start Sunday against the Cubs.

Fedde, 24, had been op­tioned Wed­nes­day but didn’t pitch for Syra­cuse. Last Sunday against the Colorado Rock­ies, he al­lowed seven runs and 10 hits across four in­nings and took the loss in his ma­jor league de­but.